Soul Stealers

CHAPTER 1
Ankarok

Kell grinned. "Tell Graal he can shove my axe up his arse!" Saark groaned… and readied for attack…

"As you wish," said Nesh, lowering its strange, bestial, wrenched clockwork head, red eyes shining, mouth full of juices in anticipation of the feed to come. Muscles bunched like steel-weave cables, fangs jutted free with crunches, and behind it the other cankers growled and the growl rose into a unified howl which mingled and merged forming one perfectly balanced single note that held on the air, perfect, and signified their reward. Kell's eyes were fixed on the lead canker, his body a tense bow-string, senses heightened into something more than human. He was the delicate trigger of a crossbow. The impact reflex of a striking snake. It was going to be a damn hard fight.

But then… the incredible happened. Nesh settled back on its haunches, eyes meeting Kell's, and the old warrior was sure he saw a corrupt smile touch the beast's lips like a tracing of icing sugar on horse-shit. Nesh stood, turned, and pushed through the cankers. The howling subsided into an awkward silence; then the cankers slowly filed after their leader, one by one, until only their rotten oil stink remained – alongside five canker corpses, bleeding slow-congealing lifeblood onto the stone roof.

"What happened?" breathed Saark, his whole body relaxing, slumping almost, into the cage of his bones. Kell shrugged, and turned, and fastened his gaze on the small boy standing perhaps twenty feet away, by the low wall overlooking Old Skulkra's ancient, crumbling remains. Kell pointed, and Saark noticed the boy for the first time. He was young, only five or six years old, his skin pale, his limbs thin, his clothing ragged like many an abandoned street urchin easily found in the shit-pits of Falanor's major cities. The boy turned, and looked up at Kell and Saark, and smiled, head tilting. It's in his eyes, thought Kell, his cool gaze locked to the boy. His eyes are old. They sparkled like diseased Dog Gems, those rarest of dull jewels left over from another age, another civilisation.

Kell stepped forward, and crouched. "You scared them off, lad?" It was half question, half statement. The air felt suddenly fuzzy, as if raw magick was discharging languorously through the breeze.

The boy nodded, but did not move. He shifted slightly, and something small and black ran down the sleeve of his threadbare jacket. It was a scorpion, and it ran onto the boy's hand and sat there for a while, as if observing the two men.

Saark let out a hiss, hand tightening on rapier hilt. "The insect of the devil!" he snapped.

"Look," said Kell, slowly. "It has two tails." And indeed, the scorpion – small, shiny, black – had two corrugated tails, each with a barbed sting.

Saark shivered. "Throw it down, lad," he called. "Our boots will finish the little bastard."

Ignoring Saark, the boy stepped across loose stone joists, moving forward with a delicate grace which belied his narrow, starved limbs. He halted before Kell, looked up with dark eyes twinkling, then slowly plucked the twin-tailed scorpion from his hand and secreted the arachnid beneath his shirt.

"My name is Skanda," said the boy, voice little more than a husky whisper. "And the scorpion, it is a scorpion of time." "What does that mean?" whispered Kell.

The boy shrugged, eyes hooded, smile mysterious. "You scared away the cankers!" blurted Saark. "How did you do that?"

Skanda turned to Saark, and again his head tilted, as if reading the dandy's thoughts. "They fear me, and they fear my race," said Skanda, and when he smiled they saw his teeth were black. Not the black of decay, but the black of insect chitin. "Your race?" said Kell, voice gentle.

"I am Ankarok," said Skanda, looking out over Old Skulkra, over its ancient, deserted palaces and temples, tenements and warehouses, towers and cathedrals. All crumbling, and cracked, all savaged by time and erosion and fear. "This was our city. Once." He looked again at Kell, and smiled the shiny black smile. "This was our country. Our world."

Saark moved to the edge of the crumbling tenement, staring over the low wall. Below, he could see the retreated cankers had gathered; there were more than fifty, some sitting on the ancient stone paving slabs, some pacing in impatient circles. Many snarled, lashing out at others. At their core was Nesh, seated on powerful haunches, almost like a lion, regal composure immaculate. "They're waiting below," said Saark, moving back to Kell. He glanced at Skanda. "Seems their fear only extends so far."

"I will show you a way out of this building," said Skanda, and started to move across the roof, dodging holes and loose joists.

Saark stared at Kell. "I don't trust him. I think we should head off alone."

Ignoring Saark, Kell followed the boy, and heard the battered dandy curse and follow. "Wait," said Kell, as they reached a segment of wall where a part of the floor had appeared to crumble away revealing, in fact, a tunnel, leading down through the wall. Kell could just see the gleam of slick, black steps. It dispersed his fears of magick, a little. "Wait. Why would you do this for us? I have heard of the Ankarok. By all accounts, they were not, shall we say, a charitable race."

Skanda smiled his unnerving smile. Despite his stature, and his feeble appearance of vagrancy, he exuded a dark energy, a power Saark was only just beginning to comprehend; and with a jump, Saark recognised that Kell had not been fooled. Kell had seen through the – disguise – immediately. Saark snorted. Ha! he thought. Kell was just too damned smart for an old fat man.

"Why?" Skanda gave a small laugh. "Kell, for you we would attack the world," said the little boy, watching Kell closely. His dark eyes shone. "For you are Kell, the Black Axeman of Drennach – and it is written you shall help save the Ankarok," he said.

His name was Jage, and they left him to die when he was six years old. He couldn't blame them. He would have done the same. The blow from an iron-shod hoof left his spine damn near snapped in two, discs crushed in several places, his bent and broken body crippled beyond repair – or at least, beyond the repair of a simple farming people. Nobody in the village of Crennan could bring themselves to kill the child; and yet Jage's mother and father could not afford to feed a cripple. They could barely afford to feed themselves.

His father, a slim man named Parellion, carried the boy to the banks of the Hentack River where, in the summer months when the water level was low, the flow turned yellow, sometimes orange, and was highly poisonous if drank. It was completely safe, so it was said, in the winter months when the flow was fast, fresh, clear with pure mountain melt from the Black Pikes; then, then the water could be safely supped, although few trusted its turncoat nature. Most villagers from Crennan had seen the effects of the toxins on a human body: the writhing, the screaming, flesh tumbling from a bubbling skeleton. Such agony was not something easily forgotten.

Jage's father placed him gently on the bank, and Jage looked up into his kindly face, ravaged by years of working the fields and creased like old leather. He did not understand, then, the tears that fell from his father's eyes and landed in his own. He smiled, for the herbs old Merryach gave him had taken away the savage pain in his spine. Maybe they thought they'd given him enough herbs to end his life? However, they had not. Parellion kissed him tenderly; he smelt strongly of earth. Beyond, Jage could see his mother weeping into a red handkerchief. Parellion knelt and stroked the boy's brow, then stood, and turned, and left. In innocence, naivety, misunderstanding, Jage watched them go and he was happy for a while because the sun shone on his face and the pain had receded to nothing more than a dull throb. The sunshine was pleasant and he was surrounded by flowers and could hear the summer trickle of the river. He frowned. That was the poisonous river, yes? He strained to move, to turn, to see if the waters ran orange and yellow; but he could not. His spine was broken. He was crippled beyond repair. For a long time Jage lay amongst the flowers, his thirst growing with more and more intensity. The herbs had left a strange tingling sensation and a bitter taste on his tongue. I wonder when father will come back for me? he thought. Soon, soon, answered his own mind. He will bring you water, and more medicine, and it will heal your broken back and the world will be well again. You'll see. It will be fine. It will be good. But Parellion did not return, and Jage's thirst grew immeasurably, and with it came Jage's pain beating like a caged salamander deep down within, in his body core, white-hot punches running up and down his spine like the hooves of the horse that kicked him.

Stupid! His mother told him never to walk behind a horse. The eighteen-hand great horse, or draught horse as they were also known, was a huge and stocky, docile, glossy creature, bay with white stockings, prodigious in strength and used predominantly for pulling the irontipped plough. Jage had been concentrating on little Megan, flying a kite made from an old shirt and yew twigs, and her running, her giggling, the way sunlight glinted in her amber curls… He ran across the field to speak to her, to ask if he, too, could fly the kite and impact threw him across the field like a ragdoll, and for a long time only colours and blackness swirled in his mind. Everything was fuzzy, unfocused, but he remembered Megan's screams. Oh how he remembered those! Now, the copper coin of the sun sank, and bright fear began to creep around the edges of the young boy's reason. What if, he decided, mother and father did not return? What if they were never going to return? How would he drink? How would he crawl to the river? He could not move. Tears wetted his cheeks, and the bitter taste of the herb was strong, and bad, in his desiccated mouth. But more, the bitter taste of a growing realisation festered in his heart. Why had they brought him here? He thought it was to enjoy the sunshine after the cramped interior of their hut, with its smell of herbs and vomit and stale earth.

And as the moon rose, and stars glimmered, and the river rushed and Jage could hear the stealthy footfalls of creatures in the night, he knew, knew they had left him here to die and he wept for betrayal, body shuddering, tears rolling down his face and tickling him and pitifully he tried to move, teeth gritted, more pain flaring flaring so bad he screamed and writhed a little, twitching in agony and impotence amongst the starlit flowers, their colours bleached, their tiny heads bobbing. Suddenly, somewhere nearby, a wolf howled. Jage froze, fear crawling into his brain like an insect, and his eyes grew wide and he bit his tongue, tasting blood. Wolves. This far south of the Black Pike Mountains? It wasn't unheard, although the people of Crennan were keen to hunt down and massacre any wolves sighted in the vicinity. The mountain wolves were savage indeed, and never stopped at killing a single animal. Their frenzies were legendary. As was their hunger.

The howl, long and lingering and drifting to silence like smoke, was answered by another howl, off to the east, then a third, to the west. Jage remained frozen, eyes moving from left to right, his immobility a torture in itself, which at this moment in time far outweighed the physical pain of his broken spine.

If they found him, they would eat him, of this he was sure.

Eat him alive.

Jage waited, in the darkness, in the silence, with pain growing inside him, his severed spine pricking him with hot-iron brands of agony, his heart thumping in his ears. I will be safe, he told himself. I will be safe. He repeated the phrase, over and over and over, like a mantra, a prayer-song, and part of him, the childish part, knew that if danger truly approached then his father, brave strong Parellion, would be waiting just out of sight with his mighty wood-cutting axe and he would smash those wolves in two, for surely the village was near enough for them to hear the howls? The villagers would not tolerate such an intrusion by a natural predator! But another part of Jage, a part that was quickly growing up, an accelerated maturity and a consideration to survive told him with savage slaps that he was completely alone, abandoned, and if he did nothing then he would surely die. But what can I do? he thought, fighting against the urge to cry. I cannot move!

He wanted to scream, then. To release his frustration and pain in one long howl, just like the wolves; but he bit his tongue, for he knew to do so would be to draw them like moth to candle flame.

Jage waited, tense and filled with an exhaustive fear; he eventually drifted into a fitful sleep. When his eyes opened, slowly, he knew something was immediately wrong despite his sensory apparatus unable to detect any direct threat.

Then, grass hissed, and Jage's eyes moved to the left and into his field of vision stepped the wolf. It was old, big, heavy, fur ragged and torn in strips from one flank; its fur was a deep grey and black, matted and twisted, and its eyes were yellow, baleful, and glittered with an ancient intelligence. This creature wasn't like the yelping puppies in the village; this wolf was a killer, a survivor, and it knew fresh, stranded meat when it saw it. "Oh no," whispered Jage, eyes transfixed. Like a snake before a charmer, Jage watched the wolf pad close, then look left and right as if expecting a trap and humans waiting with pitchfork and axe. Other wolves edged into Jage's vision, growing in confidence and spreading in a wide arc. The young boy shuddered involuntarily. They were going to eat him. Eat him alive. And there was nothing he could do.

A snarl came, low and malevolent, and those eyes never left Jage's. There was a connection between the two, between victim and killer, and Jage wasn't sure what it meant, only that he felt like a bound sacrifice on an altar; and felt suddenly, violently sick. The wolf lowered its head, fangs baring, and the snarl elongated into a continuous threatening growl. A paw edged forward, and at the same time Jage felt a tickling across his legs which twitched as if in automatic response, and the tickling moved up over his belly and onto his chest and Jage gaped at the spider there, small, glossy, black, about the size of his hand, so close he could see the many hairs that covered its legs and thorax and he blinked, for this was the highly toxic and very, very deadly Hexel Spider, otherwise known – sweetly, ironically – as a Lupus Spider. Jage allowed a slow breath to escape his fear-frozen throat, and watched the spider turn to face the wolf – which had stopped, one paw extended, eyes narrowed as if in consideration. The spider's two front legs came up, then, poised in the air, and Jage could see long curved chelicerae which he knew, even at this young age, were linked to glands carrying venom.

The wolf halted, but the growl remained, and the old creature was wise enough to recognise danger in this tiny creature. More growls echoed, and then with a shiver Jage felt more tickles spread across his body like rainfall, and his vision was flooded by a swathe of Hexel Spiders as they ran up him, over him, and poised, a glossy mass of legs and exoskeletons, almost covering his body entirely and certainly covering the ground around him in a bristling carpet. The wolf snarled, turned, and loped away; was gone.

Jage, however, could not breathe a sigh of relief, and his eyes roved frantically over the spiders which slowly lowered their legs from attack posture and began to move across him, down onto the ground and he was waiting, waiting for that painful bite which would bring about oblivion and this must have been why his parents left him here by a spider nest – certain of a quick, venomous end.

Jage blinked. One spider remained, on his chest, and he could see its tiny black eyes watching. Then it moved forward, and crawled up his face and he could feel each tiny footfall pressing his flesh and he wanted so desperately to scream but knew any sudden noise would bring about the bite.

The spider stopped, suspended over his mouth, and Jage gave the tiniest of whimpers.

From somewhere in the spider, whether it be chelicerae, gland or spinneret, a tiny droplet detached and fell into Jage's throat. It was warm, and slick. More drops followed, and a bitter taste flooded through him, and darkness came in a violent rage and he thought, I have been poisoned, I am dying, I was left for this, and a black swell of raging pain rushed up to meet him and he fell into and through a bottomless pit, and remembered no more.

Jage awoke face down, staring at rock. An incredible thirst still raged through him, and he had distant memories of motion but everything was blurred and his face felt sticky and he realised his skin was covered, covered with a sheen of silk honey web.

So they want to eat me, he thought, miserably. They've brought me back to their cave, so that they can eat me one piece at a time. I am a prisoner. I am food. He struggled to move, but could not. However, there was no pain, and Jage frowned. Then he spied a flood of spiders undulating across the rocky floor towards him, each the size of his hand, many with chelicerae clicking. Some carried sacks of eggs, encased in silk, some held them in jaws but others carried their precious cargo on their backs. Jage watched, fascinated for a few moments, until he realised they had come to feed; had come to feed their young. He shuddered, and fresh tears fell, and the surging carpet of spiders stopped and several clambered over him, delicate footfalls teasing his flesh with a terrible, mocking agony. He felt the bite, directly over his broken spine, and he screamed then and would have thrashed if he could have moved… another bite came, and another, and Jage was sobbing uncontrollably as the spiders clicked and injected him with venom, and he waited for the pain to smash through him.

Instead, only euphoria eased into his veins, and thankfully he slipped into a welcome unconsciousness.

Jage awoke, propped against rock, seated in the dark, in the cold. A breeze blew, which soothed his feverish skin. He licked dry lips, and his throat throbbed raw from excessive screaming. He turned his head, surveyed the narrow tunnels which led to this small, cramped space. On a rock near his foot, to the right, there was fruit; small berries, some strawberries, several mushrooms and a potato. Jage felt an incredible hunger rush through him, and he reached out, lifting the fruit and eating it, and berry juice ran down his face staining his chin red and he laughed, and his feeding increased in frenzy until the fruit and raw vegetables were gone. He felt stiff, and sore, and only then did realisation dawn. He could move! He could move again.

The young boy twisted, and his back felt strange, tight and odd and not quite part of him. He frowned, and reached behind himself, his hand groping for his spine. What he found there made him freeze, for there was some kind of thick cord on the outside of his skin, stretching from the base of his spine all the way up to the base of his skull. His fingers traced the strange, smooth, hard substance, and as he moved, and explored, he realised the thick cord was moving with him, flexing with him. It seemed to be integral to his flesh. What have they done to me? Jage thought, dreamlike, drifting, and he saw the spiders moving slowly into his cramped cave, only this time there was something else, another spider, much bigger this time but with exactly the same markings and appearance as the tiny Hexels. Jage fixed on this large arachnid, and its graceful movement of all eight legs in choreographed coordination; it was the same size as Jage, and he realised, at least, that answered the question of how he had been moved to the cave. What was this? A queen? A king? How did it work with spiders?

The spider eased forward, ducking a little, each leg movement a forced hydraulic step, and it stopped before Jage and he looked into the four black orbs – its eyes – and the spider was watching him and he had absolutely no idea what it wanted. Was it going to eat him? Was it going to poison him? Did it want to be friends? "Hello," said Jage, head tilting. His spine gave a tiny, tiny crackle. "Thank you, for saving me, from the wolves." The gathering of worker spiders did not move. They were a carpet of black, all eyes on him. The large one (which he later discovered was the queen) stepped even closer, and Jage's nostrils twitched, for he could smell acid and hemolymph. He kept his face perfectly straight as chelicerae the size of daggers moved to his face and the spider seemed to be… sniffing him? It moved yet closer, all eight legs surrounding him, encompassing him in a strange spider-limb cocoon, and then against all odds the spider started to sing, a song without words, a high-pitched croon, a lullaby, and Jage sat there, ensnared, and she sang to him and he felt strangely at ease, a part of this family hiding under the ground and inside the rock, feared and reviled and his face formed into a strange grimace which should have had no place on a human mask and he found acceptance for he had been abandoned and left to die but here, here and now, with the spider queen's song soothing through his skull and veins he realised he was a part of this new family; they would look after him, and protect him, and love him, and make him strong again.

Deep in the caves, there was a river. The water was black, but Jage drank from it often and never suffered ill effects. He moved around the tunnels freely for a while, exploring winding tunnels and caves and caverns, many littered with bones and long, ancient drifts of web. Most of the Hexel Spiders did their hunting outside, and fed mainly on other insects, although sometimes the three larger queens who inhabited the central caves would head out into the night and return, often with rabbits or snakes, once a weasel spitting and snarling in its sack of silk; and once, even, a wolf. Jage watched as the three queens brought the cocooned wolf into the hub of caves and tunnels; it no longer struggled, and Jage reasoned it had been given a moderate bite to sedate it. The massive shaggy beast was wrapped heavily in thick cords of restraining silk, and Jage crawled forward, curious, head tilting to one side as he realised with a start the creature was the wolf that had threatened him all those months earlier, as he lay paralysed and abandoned beside the Hentack River. On hands and knees Jage crawled until his face was only inches from the wolf, and he stared into those old, baleful yellow eyes and the wolf seemed to grin at him, panting in short bursts, and Jage felt some kind of victory and he wondered if this was sheer coincidence, or if his new family had hunted down the wolf and brought it to him.

Jage turned, and at that moment the wolf lunged, jaws snapping, slicing through his shoulder and making the young boy scream. The wolf locked jaws, and shook him, and Jage flopped to the rock and the spiders rushed over the wolf and the queen was there, small black eyes emotionless as chelicerae swept down and there came a terrible cracking; she snapped the wolf's muzzle in two, then a leg punched out, entering the old creature's skull with pile-driver force and skewering the brain within.

Jage fell back, weeping, pain flooding him. Gently, the queen gathered him up and a honey liquid oozed from her fangs and into his mouth and the pain eased away, closely followed by wakefulness.

Jage awoke. His shoulder felt good. It felt more than good. It felt strong. He looked down, and from the midpoint of his chest across his shoulder and down to his elbow, there were panels of black chitin, glossy like spider armour, and woven deep into his flesh, indeed, deep into his very muscle and bone.

The queen entered, and settled down before him. Then a foreleg reached out and touched Jage's face, and he closed his eyes and he could… he could flow with her thoughts and feel her desperation for she was a Soulkeeper of Species and they were at war and hunted and reviled and the battle had raged for thousands of years with the Trallisk, who came with fire and poison to burn them and sting them, and battles had been fought, huge underground wars in tunnel and cave systems ranging for thousands of leagues to destroy the Sacred, and the Soulkeepers had finally been defeated in a huge bloody scourge, and since that day they moved from cave system to cave system, always running, always hiding, taking the Sacred with them, but one day they would conquer for it was their way, they were a warrior species descended from a warrior species and Jage, Jage was a human exception, a conundrum for he had shown them kindness and a form of understanding and she knew he was different and unique and they needed something unique to beat the Trallisk in war and this, this meant acceptance, for he was young and in him they could find an ally and they would strengthen him and had built him a spine from cuticle containing proteins and chitin built up in layers and fed with long protein strands into his own flesh and own spine and nerves and his body had accepted it as his own. And now. Now, after the incident with the wolf, the Soulkeepers had repaired his shoulder in a similar fashion, building him a new shoulder blade, for the wolf's fangs had torn muscle and powdered bone and they were part of him now, all a part of him, and he was part of them, and they were happy to accept Jage into their family for they knew there was no evil in his body, mind or soul and he could help them, help them protect the Sacred for its purpose was important to the world, and he, Jage, was important to the world… and one day, he would understand why they gave him the Sacred to protect.

Jage's eyes opened, with a start. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, coughed, and sat up. He flexed his new shoulder experimentally, and pressed at it with his free hand. It felt as strong as steel. On a flat rock by his feet sat a platter of rock, with some fruit, and vegetables, and a long, slick, grey slab of meat. Jage reached out, picked up the meat, which slithered against his fingers as if trying to escape. He knew what he had to do. He had to get strong. He had to grow, and feed, and become powerful; only then could he repay the kindness of the Hexels and help them with their age-old war against the Trallisk; help them protect the Sacred. Help them deliver it. Jage ate the meat, rubbing absently at his chest which itched, just over his heart, and at that moment knew he needed a new name. Something to reflect his merging with the spiders; his acceptance not just into their society, but into their very genetics.

From this point, he decided, he would be known as Jageraw.

General Graal rode the black stallion to the top of the hill and turned, gaze sweeping the snowy wilderness and desolate, crumbling city of Old Skulkra. "I know you," he said, eyes narrowing. "I remember you. I remember you well, Old One.'

Graal was half vachine, half albino. Accepted by the vachine society and culture because of his age, his prowess in battle, his tactical expertise as a general, and because – although their history no longer recorded it – he was one of the blood of the first vachine to walk the world, under the watchful gaze of the Vampire Warlords, Kuradek, Meshwar and Bhu Vanesh. Graal was ancient. More than a thousand years old. Ancient slave to the Vampire Warlords. And Graal was pissed. He attempted to calm himself, tried to slow the thunder of clockwork in his breast. But he could not. His teeth ground together, and he tasted his own blood-oil.

A Harvester approached, eyes fixed on Graal, drifting through the fresh fall of snow like a ghost.

"You should calm yourself, Brother," said the Harvester. "I am fucking sick of this charade. I want the vachine dead. I want them slaughtered! I know my destiny, by right of conquest, of kindred, of birth! I know my place, Harvester!"

"It will come," soothed the Harvester. "It will all come. You have shown great patience to this point; why do you grow so agitated? What has disturbed your mind, general?"

Graal was silent for long minutes, pale lips compressed, white face shaded by shadows, gloom, and a cascade of falling snow. His stallion stamped, snorting steam, and he turned the beast to stare across Old Skulkra. The ancient towers and palaces were rimed with snow; its cracked tenements, crumbling plazas, disintegrating bridges, all were sprinkled with a sugary ash and if Graal narrowed his eyes enough, he could imagine the city as it was a thousand years ago, when it was the centre of the Vampire Warlords' Empire, when it had been a Seat of Power… and of death, misery, and human desecration.

Graal leapt lightly from his mount, and stroked his pale features, lost in thought. The skin of an albino, and yet the eyes of the vachine? How little they knew; how little they understood his lineage.

"What troubles you?" persisted the Harvester, drifting close, towering over the man. A hand reached out, five long bone needles, and rested gently on Graal's shoulder. Graal spat. "The cankers had a simple task: to hunt down an old man and his wounded companion. More than fifty cankers I sent, and yet they came back empty in tooth and claw. How could they not possibly find one simple old man and his tart?"

"You fear this man?"

Graal glanced at the Harvester then, and turned away. "No. Fear is not the correct word. I respect him, and respect the damage he may cause if left to run riot. This man is Kell, and once he troubled the vachine in the Black Pike Mountains. He and his soldiers called themselves Vachine Hunters – and yes, I do appreciate the irony, as sweet as any virgin's quim. They caused vachine and albino warriors alike serious trouble during a four year period. Not only did they slaughter our peoples, they disrupted the blood-oil trade and nearly killed in its entirety the smuggling of Karakan Red which, as we both know, many half-vachine rely on as part of Kradek-ka's… shall we say, experimentations." "You were sent to deal with this thorn?"

"Yes. To pluck it free. Many times Engineer Priests, and even Archbishops, were sent with elite squads amongst the Black Pikes to hunt down and end this… problem. They returned either empty handed, or not at all. It was said these Vachine Hunters were ghosts, demons, unsavoury spirits sent by God to remove our kind from the face of the planet. Not so. They were men, highly skilled men with a talent for death and bloodbond," he spat the word, teeth bared like an animal, "weapons baptised in some ancient dark magick of which we had no knowledge, nor understanding. They were sent by King Searlan, a magicker King, after he studied an ancient text and grew afraid." "And the text?" "The Book of Angels," said Graal, darkly.

"A dangerous tome indeed. I hope it was recovered?"

"No. That was part of my reason for persuading the Engineer Council to allow me to take their Army of Iron south; otherwise, I fear they may not have trusted me with so much singular authority." He smiled. "There was, of course, also inherent panic at their impending shortage of refined blood-oil."

"Of course," said the Harvester, with a sardonic smile. "A well crafted situation. However, this… Kell? You never found him during your time In the Black Pike Mountains?"

"My soldiers tracked him, and with his few men Kell fought a retreat into the bowels of Bein Techlienain; there, the battle raged for hours in the narrow tunnels and across high bridges, until my soldiers were sure the last of Kell's men – and the man himself – were cast screaming and begging into the Fires of Karrakesh." "And yet, it would seem he survived."

"Yes, he survived," said Graal, voice bitter. "I swear this is the same man, although I never saw his face myself under the Black Pikes." His voice dropped an octave. "I think some of my trusted soldiers were not quite honest with me about those long, dark weeks under the Stone."

"Maybe this new and unfortunate series of events is merely… coincidence? Or possibly a foolhardy, arrogant warrior seeking to step like a ganger into another's skin?" The Harvester seemed to be smiling, although this was unlikely through the narrow slit of its mouth. Harvesters were renowned for having a flatline when it came to humour.

"There is no such thing as coincidence," snapped Graal. He gave a bleak smile. "As I will demonstrate." He called to a young albino warrior, and sent him to find Nesh, the leader of the cankers sent to find Kell and Saark in Old Skulkra – and to bring them back. Nesh was as near controllable as one could achieve, with such an inherently uncontrollable and chaotic blend of twisted species.

Nesh arrived, huge, rumbling, mouth stretched wide open, tiny eyes filled with swirling gold as it watched Graal. The canker hunkered down, stinking of oil and hot metal. Inside, its clockwork clicked and stepped, and pistons thudded occasionally. Nesh was an example of a canker in its prime, although to be in its prime state, a canker must have regressed from both the human and clockwork that created it – to such an extent that the beautiful became ugly, the logical became parody. To be in prime canker state was to be days from death.

"Yes?" grunted the beast, its speech clipped and short. Words caused this creature, fully eight feet in height, great pain to utter. But it was a gift the canker treasured, for not all could speak through corrupted clockwork and fangs.

Graal walked down one flank, observing the open wounds, the twisted, blackened clockwork, the bent gears and pistons. He smiled, a tight smile. To Graal, more than any other albino or vachine in existence, these creatures were abomination. But like a good craftsman, he used his tools well – with Watchmaker precision. No matter the extent of his personal abhorrence.

"You followed Kell's scent? And the stench of the wounded popinjay?"

"Yes."

"And yet… you claim you lost them. In the maze of streets and alleyways?"

"Yes, General Graal. There much dark magick in Old Skulkra. Much we not understand. Much left over from… the Other Time."

"You are lying," said Graal.

There followed an uneasy silence, in which the huge, panting canker glared down at General Graal. Its mouth opened wider with tiny brass clicks, almost like the winding of a ratchet, and the small hate-filled eyes narrowed, fixed on Graal, fixed on his throat.

"I obey my Masters," said the canker carefully, "for only then do I get the blood-oil I require." The panting increased. Graal noted, almost subliminally, that the canker's claws were sliding free, silent, well-oiled, like razors in grease.

"My brother became a canker," said Graal, brightly, moving away from the huge beast. "For years I tried to stop it happening, tried to halt the inexorable progress of an all-conquering corruption. But I could not do it. I could not stop Nature. For days, nights, weeks, we sat there discussing the possibilities, of regression, of introducing fresh clockwork, of forceful medical excision. And yet I knew, I always fucking knew," Graal turned, fixing his glittering blue gaze on the huge beast, "when he was lying." Graal smiled, a narrow compression of lips. "I cannot tell you," snarled the canker. "You would never believe!"

"You will tell me," said Graal, voice soft, "or I will slaughter you where you stand."

"They will curse me!" howled the canker, voice suddenly filled with pain, and fear, and shock. " Who?"

"The Denizens of Ankarok," snarled Nesh, and launched itself with dazzling speed at Graal, claws free, fangs bright and gleaming with gold and brass, savage snarls erupting in a frenzy of sudden violence as claws slashed for Graal's head and the General, apparently frozen to the spot for long moments, moved with a swift, calculated precision, stepping forward and ducking wild claw swings until he was inches from the snarling frenzy of bestial deviant vachine, and his slender sword plunged into the canker, plunged deep and Graal stepped away from slashing, thrashing claws, almost like a dancer twirling away with a stutter of complex steps. Graal dropped to one knee, and waited. Nesh, in a frenzy of pain and hate, suddenly decelerated and its eyes met Graal's as realisation dawned. "You have killed me," it coughed, and blood poured from its mouth. It slumped to the ground, more bloodoil flowing from its throat, and its body slapped the damp hillside. It grunted, and there came the sounds of seizing clockwork. Finally, the internal mechanical whirrings died… and with a twitch, the canker died with them.

Graal stood, and pulling free a white cloth, cleaned his narrow black blade. The single cut had disabled the canker more efficiently than a full platoon of armed albino soldiers. His technique was precise, and deadly. He turned, and his eyes were narrowed, his face ash. The Harvester was watching him closely, almost with interest. "So, the Denizens of Ankarok aided Kell? I find that… improbable," he said, voice little more than a whisper.

"I also," snapped Graal, sheathing his sword. "Especially considering the Vampire Warlords slaughtered them to extinction nearly a thousand years ago!"